US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday he believes he has the Republican votes to end a partial government shutdown within days and that the chamber will debate Immigration and Customs Enforcement reforms for two weeks after that.
“I’m confident that we’ll do it at least by Tuesday. We have a logistical challenge of getting everyone in town,” Johnson said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme. Transport problems are persisting following a snowstorm that affected travel in the southeastern US.
The United States entered what is expected to be a brief shutdown on Saturday after Congress failed to approve a deal to keep a wide swathe of operations funded. The Senate easily passed a spending package on Friday but the House of Representatives is out of town.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have been working to ensure a debate over immigration enforcement does not disrupt other government operations. That is a contrast from last autumn, when both parties dug into their positions in a dispute over healthcare, prompting a shutdown that lasted a record 43 days and cost the US economy an estimated US$11 billion.
The deal approved by the Senate would separate the Department of Homeland Security from the broader spending package. This would allow lawmakers to approve funding for agencies such as the Pentagon and the Department of Labour while new restrictions are considered on federal immigration agents amid uproar after two US citizens were shot dead in Minneapolis.
Johnson, whose Republicans have a razor-thin majority in the House, said “our intention” is to fund all agencies except for DHS by Tuesday, “and then we will have two weeks of good faith negotiations to figure it out”.
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